40 years before HBO took over the pop cultural zeitgeist with the end of "Succession," the beginning of "The Last of Us," and a whole host of buzzed-about shows in between, the network was a popular upstart with one thing on its mind: making movies. By 1983, America's first premium cable network had already made a name for itself with broadcasts of live sporting events and reruns of recently released films, and executives at HBO had big hopes for the channel's foray into original movies. "It may
not rival the discovery of the proscenium arch, but I'm sure it will have the biggest impact on the entertainment industry since the advent of television itself," CEO Michael Fuchs told The New York Times at the time, noting that the move would put TV on par with theatrical film for the first time.
The movie HBO decided to start off with is called "The Terry Fox Story," a biopic about a Canadian athlete, activist, and amputee who attempted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. Having lost his leg to cancer as a teen, Fox decided to start a "Marathon of Hope," gaining fans and raising over $20 million in 1981, per NYT. The Terry Fox Foundation is still going strong, with a much-loved annual fundraiser run and a website that declares, "Terry Fox started a marathon against cancer. Together we can end it." The film was directed by Ralph L. Thomas, and starred non-professional actor Eric Fryer with Robert Duvall and Rosalind Chao appearing in supporting roles. Unfortunately, despite its groundbreaking place in both television and film history, these days "The Terry Fox Story" is unavailable on streaming platforms, digital rental services, and even on home video.
Read more: The 10 Worst HBO Shows Ever
The Terry Fox Story Was A Television First
One might expect HBO Max to be the natural home for the first-ever HBO movie, but the platform has made a name for itself in recent years for current Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's penchant for making original content disappear. While some newer HBO movies and shows were reportedly taken off the streamer as a penny-pinching measure in the wake of the 2022 Warner Bros. Discovery merger, "The Terry Fox Story" seems to have never been on the platform in the first place. This isn't unusual -- plenty of original cable movies have become caught in streaming limbo before thanks to rights or music clearance issues -- but it is frustrating when taking into account the film's vanishingly rare home video presence. If you want to watch the biopic now, your only real options are a fuzzy, unofficial YouTube upload or a VHS copy available on eBay.
Sources differ on whether or not "The Terry Fox Story" is worth the watch, though I think its status as the first-ever made-for-pay-cable-movie should earn it a proper DVD release on principle. According to "Inside the Rise of HBO" author Bill Mesce Jr., the film is, "on the whole, a noble and respectable, if unexceptional, biopic." Despite the synopsis, the movie has some purposeful rough edges, and according to Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones' "The Essential HBO Reader," it was "widely noted (not least of all by members of the Fox family) for its portrayal of Fox as an ambiguous hero with a difficult personality and fiery temper." The network, this text theorizes, made the movie as a sort of anti-"Brian's Song," and the biopic hinted at the sort of "maverick filmmaking" HBO would soon be known for. "We are now a force to be reckoned with," the network's CEO announced in 1982.
Two decades after "The Terry Fox Story," HBO original films would not be the focal point of pop culture conversations across the world, but the movie was prescient in a different way. By the early aughts, the network had become revered in part for its thorny and complex portrayals of often-sympathetic antiheroes -- other difficult men like Omar Little, Al Swearengen, the mafiosos of "The Sopranos," and the prison inmates of "Oz." In some ways, all of that started long before Tony Soprano sat down for his first therapy session -- with an angry, touching TV movie about a man trying to outrun cancer.
If you're looking for the easiest way to keep up with all the major movie and TV news, why not sign up to our free newsletter?
Read the original article on SlashFilm.
